The Legend of Zelda: Marxad's Tower
by Digital Soul
Summary: A man's sudden intrusion into Link's life brngs new surprises and challenges. What is this guy hiding?


**Author's Notes-** In the past, I've started stories and abanded them after a few chapters. This isn't one of those. It's my first Zelda fic; enjoy!

----

It was a warm summer day in the Kokiri Forest. The sun was bright, and the orbs seemed more active than usual. What it meant was anyone's guess, but anyone was probably on a break, because not a single soul felt obliged to take his place.

Saria laughed as Navi flew circles around her, making her dizzy. Her pink fairy met Navi in the air, and they played a game of what was probably tag, but might have been hit-and-run. Link lay on the ground near them, silently watching and smiling a serene kind of grin. He loved times of peace; happy times to be spent with his friends and loved ones. As cursed as his life may have seemed to others, Link took it all with a never-ceasing "If I don't do it, who will?" kind of attitude, which always seemed to astound the people that he met. As a matter of fact, nobody could help but to like Link, including the girls. In fact, if anything astounded people more than his attitude towards life, it was his complete ignorance of this.

"Gee, Link, could you be any quieter?" Saria teased, sitting beside him. Link laughed; she knew that he was born mute.

The two faries joined them, doing the closest thing to panting that fairies were capable of, which was a kind of bobbing up and down. Navi rested on Link's shoulder.

"Remember," she reminded him, "we promised Malon we'd pay her a visit."

Link nodded and stood, but Saria frowned.

"You're leaving again?"

"Sorry," Navi said apologetically, "but we've got things to do, people to see, and horses to pat." Seeing Saria's down-trodden look, she added "But we'll be back! Right, Link?" He smiled and nodded, which was enough for her.

"Bye, Link! Navi!"

Link waved goodbye as he made his way out of the forest and onto the wooden bridge that marked the end of it. As he made his way through the dark, damp log-tunnel, he had a sudden and rather random thought: Milk crates make good hiding places.

----

Link stood in Hyrule field with his ocarina out, the sun shining in his eyes. As he played the eleven notes that he and Epona knew by heart, he heard a whinny off to his left. The next thing he knew, Epona was running towards him full-speed, almost knocking full-tilt into him. He smiled and patted her before mounting her and giving a customary "Ha!", which meant "Go!".

Navi took refuge under Link's shirt as Epona's speed increased, and it became impossible to keep up on her own. The wind blew in Link's face, making a transition from the summer heat. The boom of the wind in his ears died down a little as Epona slowed down, and he guided her into Lon Lon Ranch. Link spotted Malon sitting on the ground in the shade of a tree, watching her father's horses run and play. Epona ran circles around her, and she giggled at the way Link's hat blew in the wind.

"Hey there, Fairy Boy!" Malon teased as Link disembarked.

He smiled, and Navi said hello for him, in the form of slightly falling and mumbling very negative things about Epona.

"Link," Malon said, taking him by the wrist, "I have something to show you! C'mon!"

She ran towards the storage room in the back of the ranch, dragging Link with her.

"It's in here," she said, opening the door.

She led him past two cows, munching on Link-didn't-know-what, through a maze of crates, and down a tiny passageway, which they had to crawl through on their hands and knees.

Link followed her, jokingly wondering what Malon could possibly want to show him. A newborn calf, perhaps? A baby horse? But what he saw was not a baby animal. It was much more unusual than that. Most people aren't fortunate enough to be familiar with spinning, heart-shaped lights.

"Ta-dah!" said Malon. "Isn't it pretty? What do you think it is?"

"It's a heart peice," Navi said matter-of-factly. "Watch."

Malon did just that as Link stepped forward and touched this heart-shaped enigma. Her smiling face turned to one of awe.

"Wow, Link! Where did you learn that?"

But where Link learned that, she never found out. At that exact instant, there was a horrifying, earsplitting explosion as the front half of the building they were in was blown completely to oblivion. A tall man dressed entirely in white stepped forth. His silvery-blonde hair shining in the sun, horrendously red eyes gleaming with triumph, he lifted a hand and casually tossed it to his right. Link watched in shock and horror as Malon was thrown against a wall. She wasn't moving.

Navi frantically flew towards her, attempting to use her limited powers of healing to Malon's aid. Link's entire body shook with uncontrolable rage and despair as he stared directly into the vile eyes of the man who had attempted to kill his friend.

The man pointed a single finger at Link and said, simply, "You."

Link lost control. His left palm started to fiercly burn, and anyone watching would have said that a triangular portion of it turned to solid gold. His eyes went completely white as a beautifully deadly explosion of pure power erupted from the golden patch on his hand. The man eyes widened for less than half a second before conjuring a shield and, with a monumental effort, manged to quell Link's outburst of rage. Link went limp and stood, motionless, waiting for death to take him. Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.

The man laughed. A deep, harty laugh that was thuroughly unexpected from one who could only be the purest form of evil, the one who had tried to kill Malon.

"You," he said, "are perfect."

----

"My name," the man said as he ran his hand over Malon's head, completely healing her wounds, "is Marxad. I've been traveling through time, looking for heroes."

"For what?" Navi interjected.

"_For_," he answered, "to assist me in an endevour that I, to be honest, cannot complete on my own." He gave Link, who was still shaken from the triforce of courage's sudden intrusion into his affairs, a kind, reliant look. "Will you help me, oh Hero of Time?"

"_We_," Navi said, very rudely, "do not help strangers _or_ would-be murderers. And especially not without being given a job description."

"A description is the least I could give you," Marxad said, rising from the chair he had been sitting in. He held out his right hand, and on it appeared a very drab gray tower, composed entirely of stone blocks, stacked half-a-mile high, at least. Its height, however, was not its strangest feature. The oddest thing about it was that it seemed to abruptly end before it got to the top, which is where most towers do, in fact, end. This one did not. It ran into a kind of gray mist and simply ceased to exist. Link gaped at it.

As if to answer his unvoiced question, Marxad said "This is my tower. It holds something very secret, and, I thought, very safe. The reason that it so abrubtly ends is that it continues in another land." The image floating over his palm transitioned to a different tower, this one starting as nothingness inside a gray mist, going up for about half-a-mile, and ending, as it should, at the top. The room at the very top was made of what appeared to be glass, and Link could see that it was full of ordinary jars and pots.

"The reason," he continued, "that I recquire your services is that someone whom I despise more than I previously thought possible has gained entry to this tower. Which, I admit, I also thought impossible."

"Well," said Navi, "why don't you force him out yourself?"

"Because," he explained, "his magic is quite a bit more advanced than mine. He has put up spells that I had never heard of to prevent me from foiling his plot."

"More advanced than... Wait a second," Navi said, "you tore the front of a brick building off with one hand, and he's more advanced than you are? You, the man who almost killed a friend of ours, can't defeat him, and you expect us to? What makes you think we're crazy enough to attempt that?"

"Is your brand not the triforce of courage, master Link?"

This reached out to a part of Link that had lied dormant for the entire year since his defeat of the skull kid in Termina; the side of him that truly was a hero, the side of him that felt an insane sense of duty towards the world itself; the part of him that always screamed "If I don't, who will?" This was no longer a young boy on vacation. This was the Hero of Time.

Link nodded and rose from his sitting position. He took a few steps forward and looked at Navi.

"No," she said. "You can't possibly be thinking of doing this, Link! We'll be killed!"

Link shrugged.

"Fine, then. We'll go."

Marxad clasped his hands together.

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "But," he added, "there will be extreme challenges in the tower. I put up physical and mental barriers that, at the time, seemed superfluous. Most human beings could not survive them."

The image on his palm had changed from that of a tower to that of thirty-seven rooms, quickly flashing in succession.

"I will give you a day to set your affairs in order before you depart. Is this reasonable to you, master Link?"

Link and Navi exchanged glances before nodding in unison.


End file.
